WhatsApp status allows users to share text, photos, videos and GIFs that disappear after 24 hours. By default, your status updates are visible to all your WhatsApp contacts. However, WhatsApp provides options to control who can see your status updates.
Status Privacy Settings
You can configure your status privacy settings by going to WhatsApp Settings > Account > Privacy > Status. Here are the status privacy options:
- My Contacts: Your status updates will be visible to all your contacts who have your phone number saved in their address book.
- My Contacts Except: You can exclude specific contacts from seeing your status updates.
- Only Share with: You can create a whitelist and only share your status with specific contacts.
These status privacy settings apply to all status updates you share. You cannot set different privacy settings for individual status updates.
Viewing Other People’s Statuses
Just like your privacy settings control who can view your status, other users’ privacy settings control whether you can view their statuses.
If someone has their status set to “My Contacts Except” or “Only Share with” and has excluded you, you will not be able to view their status updates.
Similarly, if someone is not your contact, you will not be able to see their status updates unless they have set their status to be visible to “Everyone”.
Deleting Status Updates
By default, your status updates disappear after 24 hours. However, you can manually delete a status update anytime:
- In WhatsApp, tap on your profile picture in the top left corner.
- Tap on Status.
- Tap and hold the status update you want to delete.
- Tap Delete.
Deleting a status update removes it for you and anyone who has viewed it. However, if someone took a screenshot of your status before you deleted it, the screenshot will still be available to them.
Preventing Screenshots
There is no built-in way to prevent others from taking screenshots or screen recordings of your status updates. Here are some tips to reduce screenshots:
- Avoid sharing sensitive or private information in your status that you don’t want screenshotted.
- Set your status to be visible to “My Contacts” or a limited list of people only.
- Delete your status updates frequently or right after sharing.
Status Highlights
WhatsApp allows you to pin up to 3 status updates to your profile as Status Highlights. These highlights remain visible even after 24 hours.
To pin a status update as a highlight:
- Tap and hold the status update you want to pin.
- Tap the push pin icon.
Your highlights will be visible to anyone who can normally view your status updates based on your privacy settings.
To unpin a highlight, tap and hold it and uncheck the pin icon.
Location Data in Status
If you enable location data for your status updates, your precise location will be visible to anyone who can view that status update. To prevent this:
- In WhatsApp, tap More Options > Settings > Account > Privacy.
- Turn off “Status > Share location”
With this setting off, your status updates will not include your location.
Encrypting Status Updates
WhatsApp provides end-to-end encryption for all messages, voice calls, video calls, and status updates. This means the content of your status updates is secured and cannot be accessed by anyone outside of the WhatsApp platform, including WhatsApp and parent company Facebook themselves.
The encryption key for your status updates is stored on your device only. When someone views your status, WhatsApp retrieves the decryption key from your device to decrypt and display the status content on the viewer’s device.
If you enable WhatsApp cloud backups, your encryption key for past status updates will be included in the backup. Anyone who is able to access your cloud backups could potentially decrypt and view your old status updates.
Disappearing Message Settings
Separately from your status privacy settings, you can enable disappearing messages for all your WhatsApp chats.
With disappearing messages turned on, new messages sent in the chat will disappear after the configured duration. This does not apply retrospectively to previous messages in the chat.
To enable disappearing messages:
- Open the WhatsApp chat.
- Tap the contact’s name at the top.
- Tap Disappearing messages.
- Select a duration after which messages will disappear.
Disappearing messages are an optional setting that only applies to your chats. Your status updates will still expire after 24 hours by default.
Business Profiles
Businesses and organizations can link their WhatsApp account to their Facebook Business profile. This gives them access to some additional features like badges, buttons, click-to-chat links on their Facebook page.
For business accounts, status updates are called “Stories” instead of “Status”. But the privacy settings work the same way as described above.
Conclusion
WhatsApp provides granular control over your status privacy. You can choose to share with all contacts, exclude specific people, or restrict it to a limited list of contacts only.
Likewise, your ability to view other people’s statuses depends on their privacy settings and whether they have you in their contacts.
Set your status to be as private as needed for your comfort level. Frequently deleting statuses or disabling location sharing can provide additional privacy protection.
WhatsApp’s end-to-end encryption secures your status content in transit and on their servers. But anyone with access to your local or cloud backups may be able to access your status history.
Following WhatsApp’s privacy best practices for status updates allows you to comfortably share ephemeral photos, videos and text updates with your contacts without worrying about who can see it.